Accounting System Integration

Question

Hi. We are a small retail company based in Hong Kong, and we want to start selling our products online. Ideally, we want a Magento site to link up with our existing POS system. We can handle the hosting, Magento set-up and template design ourselves, but we need help with the integration of stock levels, pricing and real time orders. Our POS system is also our accounting system, and it does a lot more than just sales - so we can't change it to a more Magento friendly POS. Let us know if this is something you can do (or want to do), especially as it would all be remote access due to our geographical location.

Answer

Thank you for your interest in our Magento Integrator. Yes, we can definitely help you get your custom POS system integrated with Magento. I'm guessing your system does not have an application programming interface (API). If it does, then it wouldn't be too difficult to connect to it. Modern Retail also has an API you or your developers could use to connect your POS system to Magento, which you can read about here:

If you don't have an API, and your developers can't use our API, then we could pass the data back and forth using something called FTP. Using this method, you would send us an Inventory Report of your Products via FTP in either XML or CSV format. We would create an XML or CSV file of your Orders for you to import into your system and place it on the same FTP site. You can read about this approach here:

Using one of these methods, we'll be able to connect your accounting system to Magento. Which option will depend upon the capabilities of your system. I suspect if it is an older system, then you might have to go with the CSV approach.